


and whatever a sun will always sing is you

by Birdbitch



Series: Chew Me Up [2]
Category: DCU
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 23:07:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9350255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Birdbitch/pseuds/Birdbitch
Summary: Bruce returns from his first journey off-planet post-bonding with Dick.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for St00pz. Title is from a poem by e.e.cummings.

He gets back later than anticipated. He thinks, they’re lucky they got back at all, and he thinks about lotus plants. Bruce runs a hand through his hair after taking off the cowl, tired from the flight back to Gotham from D.C., makes the decision to take a quick shower in the cave (even if upstairs is nicer), and thinks for a moment about doing more work. The problem with that is that the cave is too cold and he’s spent the past two months in space, and a month before that on another planet that he almost got stuck on, and another two months in space before  _ that _ , and Bruce figures that whatever records he wants to make on his own apart from the ones he made earlier during decontamination on the Watchtower can wait until tomorrow night.

He wants to be back in his own bed. 

The plant they were fed wasn’t, technically, a lotus plant, though Diana was the one who made the immediate connection to the effects they were feeling and the one from the  _ Odyssey _ . Clark thought about  _ The Wizard of Oz _ and Dorothy’s poppies. Bruce hadn’t found a good comparison to make; he thought instead about how to dissect the plant and manufacture a good antidote to the poisoning should they encounter anything like it again. Diana and Clark talked about what they felt, and when they asked what he saw, he didn’t answer.

It’s not that he doesn’t trust them, but even among friends Bruce finds that he’d rather keep these things to himself. 

Dick is asleep in their bed, upstairs, in the master bedroom, on a mattress that they picked out together, on sheets that Bruce bought years ago, on his belly, one arm tucked under his head and the pillow and one leg drawn up, spread apart from the other and bent at the knee. The hand above the pillow is the one on which he’s wearing his engagement ring, and there’s a little sheen to his shoulders, like he might have had a massage before bed--the batsuit makes his shoulders tense up more than they should, or maybe he does it to himself trying to look more imposing--and it’s attractive, even with the soft light from the moon outside. Sometimes, during long nights, Bruce knows Dick talks in his sleep, and he imagines he’s probably in the same boat (and wasn’t that the reason he never spent the night with anyone before?). It’s not a surprise, then, that he’s murmuring something--it’s unintelligible, as per usual--but it does make Bruce a little more cautious about waking him up, worried about interrupting a dream that needs to be seen towards completion.

On the planet, the inhabitants assumed that the lotus plants were a gift, and that the trio would have been glad to sit in their slumber. It relieves pain. It grants you your greatest desires. It works miracles. It poisons you and keeps you from your loved ones, and Bruce is frustrated that he’s the only one who was able to force himself out of it. Kryptonian and Amazon physiology be damned--Bruce has always been able to kick himself out of good dreams faster than out of his nightmares.

Besides, the real thing is always so much better. 

He should wait, probably, until the morning, to wake Dick up: the spare uniform had been used, an indication that Dick had been posing as Batman so there wouldn’t be any coincidental disappearance between the cowl and Bruce, and nights as Batman were always long. (Bruce had noticed, with only a little irritation, that some of the casebooks were left out on the desk, like Dick had to be urged away from them and into bed before he could clean up.) He should wait, but Bruce, after several months away, is feeling particularly selfish, and if he waits until the morning he’s going to have to spread his time back evenly between Dick and everyone else who’s been missing him. He’d rather just take what he wants now. 

Dick stirs before Bruce can decide exactly what to do, and he blinks a few times before his face settles into a sleepy, pleased smile, and he reaches to touch Bruce’s arm. “Hey.” 

“I didn’t mean to wake you up.” He didn’t, really. But he feels his heart rate starting to pick up, because he’s human as much as he wants to deny it and because it’s been  _ so long _ , and because Dick is charming even with his bedhead and voice groggy from sleep. 

He watches him sit up, yawn and stretch his arms over his head, and holds back until Dick looks at him with half-lidded eyes and asks, “What were you waiting for?”

Five months is a long time for anyone to wait, Bruce supposes. “I have to go back to D.C. soon to run tests on a plant sample.” I want to make sure nobody can ever trick me into thinking you’re with me when you’re not ever again. He leans in and gets ready to consume, and this is so familiar that he hopes that he’s not lost somewhere in space still, thinking about how much he’d love to come home to a waiting and ready partner.

“You’re not getting away that easily,” Dick answers, swiping his tongue over Bruce’s bottom lip. “After showing up late? Please. I’ve got you for at least a week before you can take off again.” For Dick’s tone, there’s still a sense of longing and need reaching through the careless way he shoves the blanket off from around his waist and climbs into Bruce’s lap. He’s greedy with his kisses and touches, pulling Bruce closer as though they’re not already skin to skin now. “You should have called,” Dick says, and he whines, throwing his head back when Bruce goes to kiss the mating mark on his neck. 

“There was poor reception,” Bruce answers, and he bites down on the mark just hard enough to get Dick trembling. “Did you have any cycles while I was gone?”

“Yes,” Dick gasps. He smells like he’s on the verge of heat again, making Bruce feel like maybe he never really left. The idea of having left his mate alone hurts more now that they’re bonded than before, and Bruce tries to be tender as an apology. The operative word here is “tries,” because for what it’s worth, he’s an alpha, and he’s needy, and he’s lucky he didn’t go into rut. When he glances over to the nightstand, he notices a wedding planner, and he groans, wanting more and more. This rutting through his sweatpants and Dick’s boxers isn’t enough. “Wasn’t good without you.” He wants to know what Dick did without him, but he feels like if he asks, Dick will tease him and he’ll explode. He doesn’t like feeling this human.

“Any pseudoheats?” Bruce asks, needing to know if their bonding worked the way he had hoped, wanting to make sure that Dick wasn’t in distress alone, and Dick claws his shoulders, clenching onto him. 

“No,” he answers. “Thank God.” And then Bruce bites him again and gets a loud moan in response. Bruce can feel the cool of Dick’s engagement ring against his skin and it’s what gets him to pull away--much to Dick’s immediate upset, until he realizes that Bruce is pulling away the sweatpants and he scrambles forward so he can grab Bruce’s hips. “I’ve been thinking about what to do for the past five months,” Dick says, and Bruce looks down at him, interested in hearing the rest. 

One of the dreams, he supposes, was a little like this. 

Definitely not as good, he realizes, when Dick takes him in his mouth and he has to throw his own head back, biting back a howl and forcing himself not to grab Dick by the back of the skull and just  _ thrust _ . But he knew that then, too. He stutters out something close to a warning when he’s about to come, but Dick doesn’t stop until he’s decided that he’s finished with Bruce. When Dick pulls off, swipes a lick up, and then scents Bruce there, he has to pull the omega up so he can taste him. “You’ve been thinking about that?” Bruce asks, and Dick nods, pulls Bruce forward and on top of him so he’s back on the mattress, looking up. 

“And other things.” Dick hooks his ankles around Bruce’s waist, digs his heels in, and that’s another thing--the lotus can’t replicate the real thing, the actual feel of Dick leaving his mark in the same way the Bruce leaves them on him. 

“Show me,” Bruce says, and he’s almost surprised when Dick gets him on his back. He’s out of practice; they’ll have to do more sparring together, maybe go for a run on the next full moon. If they bring Tim with them, he’ll be more inspired to behave. But he looks up at Dick’s flushed face and commits himself to this moment instead of thinking about what they’re going to do over the next few days, reaches a wide hand up to pull his mate down into a kiss. 

  
  


They sleep in until noon, when Bruce startles awake, worried for a moment that maybe this was all a dream still after all, that he’s still on the planet of the lotus-eaters, or that his mind has been irreparably damaged as a result of the still unstudied plant. Dick wakes up next to him, still messy from the night, and he smells like Bruce. “Alright?” he asks, seeing the far-away look on Bruce’s face, and Bruce nods his head before indicating towards the wedding planner. “Oh. That.”

“It seems more Tim’s speed than yours,” Bruce says, picking it up. It’s heavier than he would have expected, but Dick’s had five months to spend planning. He doesn’t open it, waits for Dick to take it. 

“That’s because Tim got it for me. He’s really too much like you to only be adopted.” Bruce recognizes the dig and watches a sort of smile on Dick’s mouth. Dick opens the binder, and it’s more like a scrapbook more than a planner--things that he likes, cakes he’s tried and the bakery business cards, some tuxedos he’s seen. Photographers. Tailors. Party planners (like he won’t just ask his friends for help). “He gets stressed out when he sees how disorganized it is, haha.” Dick sighs and closes it, handing it back to Bruce before tugging at his ear, a little embarrassed. “It’s been something to do, waiting for you to come back.” He looks at Bruce, fidgeting, and Bruce places the planner back on the table. “I know people are probably expecting a big wedding, but all I could think about while you were gone was how much I just wanted you back, and how much I wanted to keep you to myself.”

It’s something that makes Bruce sigh in relief; for one thing, he wasn’t looking forward to any large-scale wedding, and for another--he’s never doubted that Dick wanted him, but there’s always a fear that he’s not going to be accepted back for something he’s done. He’d deserve it, he reasons, but that doesn’t mean he’d want it to happen. 

“You don’t want a big wedding,” Bruce says, and Dick shrugs.

“I mean, sure I do--it’s something that my family always did--but maybe I’d rather just go get married now. We can renew our vows later with a big ceremony or something.” He scowls for a second. “I had a huge thing planned, too, making you dinner and proposing to  _ you _ , like--I don’t know, and asking if you just wanted to elope. I kept thinking about it, and about getting to be alone with you, and I missed you.” 

“You’re alone with me now.” 

Bruce has the bite marks on his own neck, his own part of their bond mark, from where Dick leaned down and sank his teeth in while sitting on Bruce’s knot. “For a little bit, I thought I was nesting, which is silly, but--”

It makes Bruce’s cheeks feel hot thinking about it. “You--”

“I wasn’t,” Dick answers, and he laughs a little. “My heat just never started that way before, you know? So I’m gathering up all the pillows in the manor and Tim sits down and says, ‘Maybe this would work better,’ and he hands me that binder, and it--it did work. Maybe not like he thought it would, but it did.”

Even with the lotus flower, Bruce hadn’t thought about what Dick would be like, nesting. It’s a strange inclination towards family life--and he knows that they’ve both felt that pull before, with Jason and now again with Tim--but it’s different. He wonders whatever wishes for the future the plant might have disregarded--maybe it only focuses on sexual fulfillment, or something. He feels Dick curl closer to him, sliding down and resting his head in his lap. “How many wedding magazines have you gone through?”

“Too many. I never want to look at one ever again.” Dick looks up at him, gets a glint in his eye and it--it would maybe make Bruce swoon, even though he’d never admit that he’d be the swooning type. “Let’s stay in bed all day,” Dick says, and Bruce can imagine the feel of him again, the tightness and Dick panting, riding him or under him, begging, even though he’s not in heat. Perhaps still wanting from the time spent apart, Bruce doesn’t need a lot of convincing, especially not when Dick slips his arm back under the covers. 

  
  


Eventually, they do make it out of the bedroom, and then after that, out of the bathroom where they spend too long in the tub and end up splashing too much water on the floor. Dick leans close to Bruce, and Bruce keeps scenting him even as they get dressed and ready to go down to dinner. Dick’s still going to patrol tonight, even though Bruce would rather go with him, but the hours of spaceflight and then the work from the Watchtower have caught up to him all at once, and he feels jetlagged in a way he might not have five or ten years ago. 

“I’ll be in the cave if you need me,” he says, and Dick nods his head as he pulls the Nightwing suit on. Tim’s already doing warm-up stretches, tense from a day of finals at school and ready to get back to doing something that he thinks matters more. 

“There’s a charity ball for the Wayne Foundation in a couple days if you want to arrange for patrol coverage,” Dick says. “Things have mostly been quiet, except for a few major thefts that have Catwoman’s name all over it--”

“I’ll take care of Selina. And figuring out what to do for the ball. Where there any other open cases you were looking into?”

Tim bounds over. “We’ve got a few leads for the Lexcorp labs that have been being sabotaged,” he answers. “They bought the space about a month after you left, and then a few weeks ago have started having some major break-ins.”

“Luthor will probably have his own people working on it, but if it seems like it’s going to cause problems for the citizens of Gotham, keep an eye out. Nightwing--” Dick turns to look at Bruce, mask in place. “Remember it’s a school night. Robin needs to be home earlier rather than late.”

“Right.” 

Bruce watches them leave and dedicates the time until they come back to working case files and seeing what Dick has been doing since he’s been gone. He doesn’t even realize that he’s fallen asleep until Dick wakes him up with a gentle jostling of his shoulder, suit away and exchanged for sweatpants and a tank top. “For the record,” Dick says, “You don’t have to worry about Selina because Tim caught her tonight.”

“Oh. Good.”

“Also, sleeping in the cave is going to give you a cold. Come up to bed?” 

“I’ve got work to finish--”

“It’ll still be here tomorrow,” Dick says, not impressed with the same excuse Bruce has used before. “Are you coming?” 

He smells clean, and his hair is a little damp from a shower. Bruce nods his head, hopes that falling asleep while working isn’t going to become a permanent side effect of having been fed the lotus-flowers, and follows Dick back up to their bedroom. He watches Dick shed the sweatpants like they had only been donned to cover him through the manor, and he lets himself loosen up when Dick wraps his arms around his shoulders. “I know we already did this today,” he says, “but I’m glad you’re back.”

Bruce thinks about how much he wants to say that they can do this every day for the rest of their lives, and instead is only able to manage a grunt before leaning down and kissing Dick, tired and a little lazy. The initial rush of smelling his mate again has faded by now, and he likes the idea of just curling around him, protecting him, and going to bed, which is exactly what they do. 

He hears Dick make a keening noise and then a whispered, “Fuck, I forgot--Bruce, are you still awake?” 

“Enough,” he answers, even though it’s not that much. 

“The charity ball is in Metropolis not Gotham,” Dick answers. “Don’t forget that we’re going to have to make travel plans and then book a hotel room. Tim said that gossip magazines have already been talking about our engagement but we should probably make sure we’re ready to answer questions.” He yawns, stretches, satisfied to have said something. “Okay.” 

“This could have waited,” Bruce says against the back of Dick’s neck. 

“I might have forgotten. Tim wants to come too.” He yawns again. “Good night. I’m glad you’re home.”

Bruce squeezes him and hopes, again, that this isn’t a dream. 

  
  



End file.
